What I Ate and Drank in Norway, or Land of the $50 Sandwich and $20 Beer

by Michael Y. Park

on 08/05/13 at 05:00 PM

A couple months ago, I went to Norway with an old friend, where we visited his sister in Stavanger and took in sights in Oslo for a couple days.

I'll save you the trouble of clicking on the jump. Don't bother reading the rest of this post. I mean it. I'll encapsulate the whole thing here by describing all you need to know about that photo you see above: It's a $50 sandwich.

OK, you want more detail? It's a lox sandwich with the cured salmon wrapped around a core of lusciously soft scrambled eggs and perched atop greens and Norwegian-style multigrain toast about the size of half my palm. It was very good.

Did I mention it cost fifty freaking dollars?

All right, I should mention that we bought it at the Grand Cafe in Oslo, not exactly a cheap takeout joint, and were sitting next to Ibsen's favorite table.

But, man, is Norway friggin' expensive!

All right, let me start all over again, and take a different tack.

Norway is a land of majestic beauty, people proud of their Viking history, and a high standard of living that hints at a utopian future for all mankind. So what could an American visitor possibly bring with him to enhance his experience in the Land of the Midnight Sun?

Trail mix.

Bring bags and bags of trail mix, because unless you're Scrooge McDuck, you're probably going to have to make some tough choices between partaking of the country's many rich cultural offerings, and eating and drinking.

This is whale tartare from Tjuvholmen Sjømagasin, described to me by a resident as a high-concept seafood restaurant in a hoity-toity neighborhood of Olso that was historically the island where thieves and pirates went to hide out and bury their stashes. It's a starkly beautiful place with huge windows that looked out on the bay. As we ate, we watched locals motoring back and forth in boats in the canal below, running errands and ferrying packages.

The whale meat was slightly fishy, very fatty, and definitely red meat. It actually reminded me of horse, for some reason. It was not, the waiter assured us, an endangered whale, but a smallish, common species typically found near Oslo's harbor.

Cauliflower, three ways, from Tjuvholmen Sjømagasin. My favorite form of cauliflower, apparently, is foam. That reminds me of a joke I just made up half of.

"What did the cauliflower say to the molecular gastronomist?"

I haven't made up the rest yet. Suggestions are welcome.

Chocolate "granola" with mint leaves and raspberries.

Damn! Maybe I should've made it a chocolate bar instead of a cauliflower.

This may actually have been my favorite meal in all of Norway, grilled mackerel with sauteed local greens, steamed potatoes and dill sour cream at NB Sørensens Dampskibsexpedition, a bustling eatery inside a former shipping company headquarters that sent many Norwegian immigrants to the U.S.

If you forgot to bring trail mix, the national candy, the Quick Lunch, pretty much a Kit-Kat, is a good alternative. It's a national tradition to bring them along on long hikes, and the inside of the wrapper even features popular trails of Norway.

This photo (taken near midnight, by the way), shows the hot-dog guy in downtown Stavanger doing a relatively brisk business. We just got fries, which were only $8 or thereabouts.

So how do locals afford to eat out if everything's so expensive? Sure, Norwegians have the highest per-capita income in the world, but, as it was explained to me, even they find the prices exorbitant. So the answer is, they rarely go out, at least compared to people of other countries. Typically, they'll save up for one night out a week at most. When they go out to a bar, they'll often have one drink with friends before calling it a night. Restaurant visits are apparently rarer, with more folks opting to join together on weekend days for relatively inexpensive barbecues in the park, using cheap disposable grilling kits from the supermarket. (I saw a lot of this one weekend afternoon in Oslo).

As for beers, the local beers were mainly lagers, ranging from $12 to $18 for 33 cl to half a liter. Foreign beers were more expensive, naturally--a bottle of Brooklyn lager set us back about $20. We managed to sample quite a few local brews at the Cardinal in Stavanger, a two-story beer lover's pub that I highly recommend, and where the "one-drink-out" rule definitely was suspended. I'm afraid, however, that I couldn't even pronounce the beers we tried, much less remember them.

Having spent 5 months in Norway a couple of years ago, I found this fun to read -- and accurate. Wondering, though, if you ever got to the applecake at the Frognerseter outside Oslo. If not, you'll have to go back. :-)

crpaulk
11:21:06 AM on
08/06/13

That's almost as bad as the $15 each espressos I got at a cafe in Paris. (should've asked prices first). If I was paying that much for food in Norway, I'd be offended if someone spit on my cauliflower (Despise foam).